When one of the leading Junk Food Giants says it wants to help fight
obesity by selling you more Diet Coke, nothing could be further from the
truth. But when it takes that campaign a step farther, by paying
newspapers to run full-page ads disguised as scientific articles, that’s
deceptive advertising at its worst. We should be celebrating a
3-percent decline in sales of Diet Coke. And we should be boycotting any
product that contains aspartame, a synthetic chemical compound linked
to a host of health issues, including obesity, and brought to market
under the shadow of dirty politics.

Friday, August 30, 2013

Democracy Now! included an ABC news report on the suicide in 2011 of former Chicago Bear and Notre Dame safety Dave Duerson:

CHRIS NOWINSKI: Football players are at a very high risk because they take, studies show, about a thousand hits to the head, each fall some—you know, at least 20 Gs, which is like a small car crash. So, essentially, your brain actually starts falling apart. Ten or 20 years later, you start getting symptoms like memory problems and emotional problems, and they eventually lead to dementia.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you tell us about some of the most damning evidence compiled in the lawsuit that prompted the NFL to decide to settle, especially the role of a doctor who was in the lawsuit, named repeatedly, Dr. Elliot Pellman? BILL LITTLEFIELD: Yeah. Well, happily, Juan, a lot of that evidence is going to come out, even though there won’t be a trial, because there’s a book coming out very soon and a Frontline documentary called League of Denial, in which Dr. Pellman is featured. The charge against him, basically, is that, first of all, he was in charge of the concussion committee for the National Football League, and he had no particular specialty in neurology. He’s a rheumatologist. So, why he was even in that position has been brought into question. He was also the sideline physician, the team doctor for the New York Jets, and numbers of members of the Jets have said that they suffered concussions during games, Dr. Pellman looked at them, asked them a couple of questions, and then sent them back into the game. And for years, before this settlement, Dr. Pellman had been saying that there was no evidence at all that suffering multiple concussions would lead to any problems, brain problems, down the line.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Oddly AKSARBENT had never seen the video for this hit until today. The 15 seconds between :50 and 1:05 contain some of the sexiest editing ever done for a music video — actually more erotic than some porn, without being at all indecent. Ah, the power of expertly-executed suggestion: less is more and a lesson to Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke.

Here was Jean Stothert's spin during her March, 2012 rant against the eventual passage of Omaha's LGBT antibias legislation, on account of her opinion that it was unnecessary:

One female pastor testified last week that she become open with her sexual orientation after two years in Omaha — something that she stated could not be done for 36 years in Kentucky.

Here's the reality: today, Kentucky's capitol, Frankfort, become the fifth community in the state (along with Louisville, Lexington, Covington and tiny Vicco) to pass an ordinance protecting LGBTs.
Nebraska has only one such community.
By the way, Vicco has a gay mayor (see video below.) Now that's an idea.

"...this spot for John Lewis home insurance actually, you know, SELLS INSURANCE. Because frankly, this whole “let’s get ha-ha about insurance” ad movement (I’m
looking at you, AllState “Mayhem”) that Geico helped jumpstart is just
getting so fucking tiresome."

AKSARBENT thinks copyranter is wrong about Allstate, right about GEICO, the ATM for Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett's gargantuan holding company, Berkshire-Hathaway.
How pathetic that GEICO, one of the largest insurance companies in the world, was totally outclassed by an ad for the insurance subsidiary of a British department store.

Andraka accepting the $75,000 top prize at 2012's ISEF
(the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair)

Before he was old enough to drive, Jack Andraka developed detection tool for pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancer that:

"costs 3 cents and takes five minutes to run. It's 168-times faster, over 26,000-times less expensive, and over 400-times more sensitive than our current methods of diagnosis. But it can also detect cancer in the earliest stage, when someone has close to a 100 percent chance of survival. It has extremely high accuracy, being over 90 percent accurate."

See video of Andraka accepting his prize in this previous AKSARBENT post.If Andraka, who is gay, were to retire before he is old enough to legally drink in a bar (possible, given that he owns the international patent for the above device) he would have contributed more to society than Brian Brown, Maggie Gallagher, Phyllis Schlafly, Scott Lively, Brian Fischer, Pat Robertson and the rest of the the antigay-for-pay industry will have in the entirety of their destructive lives. If they were honest, forthright people, this would probably cause them to loose sleep, but AKSARBENT suspects that they sleep very well.
Andraka is now working with other promising teen scientists and engineers to develop a smartphone-sized user friendly device to diagnose 15 conditions in pursuit of the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize. Read more at MetroWeekly.

Ex-NSA employee/comic Wanda Sykes on expectations of privacy by U.S. citizens:'How arrogant are you to think that your conversations are that important?'

NSA alumna Sykes had a lot to say about privacy

It just drives me nuts that people are all "Oh, the government's listening to my stuff." Well then get the hell off Facebook then... Oh, my privacy! Oh, my privacy! Get the hell out of here with that crap...
and about Edward Snowden
"They should get him back here, try him, and he rots in jail."
Sykes was offended that people confuse contracters like Snowden (who dropped out of high school, then got a G.E.D.) with NSA employees like the one she used to be, noting pointedly that she herself has a "college degree," which AKSARBENT supposes distinguishes Sykes from such lower class, intellectually inferior high school dropouts like Kodak founder George Eastman, directors Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino, writer George Bernard Shaw, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas, and fellow comedian Richard Pryor, not to mention ABC news anchor Peter Jennings.
Speaking of ABC News, it reported in 2008 that NSA intercept operators in Ft. Gordon, Georgia, passed around phone sex conversations of soldiers and officers with their wives and girl friends.
But AKSARBENT is sure that they were all college graduates, and not G.E.D. temps.
Just like Wanda Sykes!

A few YouTube comments posted in response to the above video:

reelreeler hmmm......you're a funny comedian Wanda, but having the 4th amendment﻿ shit on ain't funny, and now you seem just like another government thug talking.Daniel P Wow,﻿ I thought you were cool Sykes...MegaSayitlikeitis For﻿ the first time, I don't agree with Wanda.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

There's another twitter hashtag mocking the NSA's abuse of America's privacy: #NSAlovepoems. Evidently the habit of surveilling exes is common enough at the agency that they have an gook term for it: loveint, for love intelligence. NPR covered this. So did CNN:

Our Global Supplier Diversity team participates in outreach events such as the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) Awards Dinner, the NGLCC Business and Leadership Conference, and the Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Corporate Sponsors Reception.

Queer Nation (whose action today in NYC's Times Square was documented here) responded with the graphic at left.
In its press release, Coke reminded readers that it has been an Olympic Sponsor since 1928. What it did not mention specifically was its cold-blooded support of Hitler's 1936 Nazi Olympic showcase and the fact that it placed ads for Coca Cola in Hitler Youth publications.

We don't much like the mayor now and didn't like her ham-fisted opposition to LGBT equality initiatives when she was on the city council (see our video below) but we never would have thought of this...

Today's installment of Sweetness and Light, sportswriter Frank Deford's commentary aired by NPR, will be available later today at 9 am EST. Here's an excerpt from the piece, entitled How About A Gold Medal For Human Rights For Gay People?

It was the IOC that got us into this
mess, lying down with fleas. Has the outgoing IOC president, a cipher
named Jacques Rogge, stuck his neck out? There are six men running to
succeed him, including Thomas Bach of Germany, the odds-on favorite.
Only one has had the guts to speak out for gay rights: Richard Carrion
of Puerto Rico. If there was any courage or decency in what is
so smugly called the Olympic movement, there is one noble way to handle
this. Simple: every country which opposes Russia's ugly anti-gay laws
should refuse to send its officials to the Games in Socchi. Oh,
the Games will go on, all the athletes will be there to compete. NBC
will still get its ratings. Big Macs will still roll over the counter.
Everybody outside Russia will enjoy the Games, but Vladimir Putin and
his thuggish cronies will be sitting alone, shamed, rejected by the
decent nations of the world. And thereby will one more gold medal be
visible for all to see: the one for human rights for gay people. Would
our USOC have the guts to lead that way? Well, I'll drink to that
dream. A double Stoli, with tonic and a lime, if you please.

For years, Ray Lambrecht, of Lambrecht Chevy in Pierce, NE, put all of his unsold new cars into storage at the end of each model year. Now 50 of them will be sold, along with 400 trade-ins. Most of the cars have been sitting in a field for years to decades, but the ones left inside are in pretty good shape.

Although the auction isn't for 31 days, the Impala is already up to $15,250 as of this writing. The car's sticker price (still on the window) is $3,254.70.

Nebraska GOP Gov. Dave Heineman, pictured with a weasel.
Heineman is on the right.

Tuesday, the ACLU and ACLU of Nebraska sued on behalf of Joel Busch and Todd Vesely and two other gay couples in Lancaster County District Court over Nebraska's policy ban on gays becoming foster parents, a policy it shares with only one other state — Utah.

Jen Rae Wang

Ever faithful to his habit of stabbing gay Nebraskans in the back without leaving any fingerprints, the state's GOP Governor, Dave Heineman, hid behind the skirt of his disinformation director, Jen Rae Wang, who saved him the humiliation of once again attempting to blame somebody else by doing it for him.
Wang attributed the policy to a 1995 memo by an unnamed HHS director in Democratic Governor Ben Nelson's administration, even though Heineman has had the power to reverse the unjust policy for close to a decade.
Instead, Heineman recently turned down a waiver for Busch and Vesely.

Dave Bydalek of Family First of Nebraska

KETV's always-excellent Andrew Ozaki (who could probably explain quantum mechanics in a 2-minute segment if he had to) reported the story for KETV.
Dave Bydalek, of Family First of Nebraska, who recently tried to sell the discredited Regnerus Study to the Unicameral's Judiciary Committee and was properly dismissed by Brad Ashford, weighed in: "Cohabitating couples provide a less stable home for kids
in a foster care environment."
Then he pretended to be even-handed and not a toxic antigay-for-pay bigot by adding: "So it doesn't matter if it's a same sex
couple or a cohabitating heterosexual couple."
Reporter Ozaki then stated the obvious: "But Nebraska doesn't recognize same-sex marriages or unions — even from other states. The always-precise Ozaki probably said "unions" rather than "civil unions" because Nebraska refuses to recognize either civil unions or domestic partnerships, much less same-sex marriage.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The reckless storage of Koch Carbon's mounds of toxic petcoke was ended in Detroit when authorities threatened to padlock the facility unless something was done. Now OccupyCleveland claims to have spotted the stuff moved to similarly uncovered piles in Toledo, Ohio.
Koch family members fund ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has legislative puppets introduce "model" legislation favorable to corporations in state legislatures and Americans For Prosperity, a teabagger astroturf front. In Nebraska, ALEC counts gubernatorial candidate Charlie Janssen among its boosters, though Janssen tried to mislead KMTV about his ALEC ties, and Americans For Prosperity, a pro-Keystone XL pipeline group in Nebraska headed by Brad Stevens.

Greg and Stillman Stewart have a knack for nurturing children with
serious needs. The two men have been together for over 30 years and are
parents to five children that they adopted out of the California foster
care system. Most of the kids came to them after suffering years of
abuse and multiple foster home placements. When one of their children
first came to live with them, at five years old, he was still in
diapers, didn't know how to use utensils, and suffered from severe
speech impediments. By 17, he brought home a report card with all As and
one B. Another child, who had been through 17 foster home placements
and three failed adoptions in three different states, is now a college
sophomore.The whole family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska in 2011, when Greg, a
United Church of Christ minister, took a position at First-Plymouth
Congregational Church there. As their kids have grown and some have
moved out of the house (their youngest is 13, their oldest 20), Greg and
Stillman realized they wanted to open their home to more children in
need. When they applied for a foster parent license in Nebraska,
however, they were turned away because they're gay men. Nebraska bars gay people from being foster parents and also bars any
unmarried couple that lives together from being foster parents. Since
Nebraska screens all foster care applicants by doing a home study,
checking for criminal history or past child abuse, reviewing medical and
mental health records, and evaluating the family's stability and
ability to care for children, this ban simply means that Nebraska is
kicking out lesbians and gay men who would pass the regular foster
parent screening. And it's depriving kids in the Nebraska foster care
system (there are 3,854 children in that system now, 48 percent of whom
have been there for more than a year) of what could be just the home
they need. After all, there aren't many foster parent applicants with a
record like Greg and Stillman's. Today the ACLU filed a constitutional challenge, on behalf of three couples
to Nebraska's ban on foster parenting by gay people...

Donald Trump has set up a web site excoriating New York State's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is suing Trump for $40 million, claiming that "Trump University" is a bait-and-switch scam.
But the copy in Trump's site seems to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Shouldn't a published defense of its practices by a "university" be letter perfect?
We've highlighted two obvious blunders (in a single paragraph) in red.

But don’t just take
our word for it, see for yourself. Unlike reading a newspaper article,
here you can find all of the evidence to substantiate the facts: more
than 10,000 handwritten surveys [images of the more than 10,000 handwritten survey's are nowhere on the site] filled out by former Trump University [students? PR reps? What?]
showing a 98% approval rating, video of former Trump University
students, including Tarla Makaeff, who despite stating on video that “I
thought today was great. All of the speakers were really good”, is now
the named plaintiff in a class action lawsuit in California demanding a
refund, and news articles documenting Eric Schneiderman’s abuse and
misuse of the New York Attorney General’s Office for his own political
gain.

Tweets to U.S. Olympic figure skater Jeremy Abbott's twitter account turned from laudatory boosting to angry booing after his remarks to the Denver Post about Russian and IOC threats to athletes considering speaking out about abuse of LGBTs in Russia and draconian new laws targeting them:

"Russia is hosting us," Abbott said. "I'm
not going to go into somebody's house and be like, 'Um, the way you
decorate is hideous, and you need to completely redo this or I'm never
coming back.' It's a little rude, so I don't want to say bad things
about a country that's hosting the world, essentially.
"Maybe I don't agree with their policies, and maybe I don't agree with
some things, but that's for them to sort out. My speaking out just makes
me look like an ass."

Below are a few samples posted to Abbott's twitter account in the last 24 hours:

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Buzzfeed, which exhaustively purports to explain the cultural references in Gaga's new video, Applause, notes that she has a degree in comparative literature.
The post is called Every cultural reference you probably didn't catch in Lady Gaga's new video. We could quibble about Buzzfeed's identification of the silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as simply Dr. Caligari, but we can't quarrel with the omission of the Norma Desmond allusion, which we caught, and therefore was properly left out by the apparently psychic staffers at Buzzfeed.
Those who don't have a college degree may simply revel in Gaga's raucous, anarchic sense of humor, something lacking in the slew of truly terrific music videos made by Madonna in her prime, because she took/takes herself way too seriously.

The things AKSARBENT discovers by reading the push-content blog list on its own blog!
We noticed gay literary blog Band of Thebes posted about a new book (left) so we surfed there to see what quote from the publisher's promotion it would spotlight:

"...Johnson argues instead for a queer historicist approach. In so doing, he
uncovers a startlingly unruly rural past in which small-town
eccentrics, "mannish" farm women, and cross-dressing Civilian
Conservation Corps enrolees were often just queer folks so far as their
neighbours were concerned. Written with wit and verve, Just Queer Folks
upsets a whole host of contemporary commonplaces."

Band of Thebes went on to note that Publishers Weekly says he [author Colin R. Johnson] "doggedly decodes" passages of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Stegner's The Big Rock Candy Mountain
"that hint at gay sex."
Here's the pithy, tough-love-for-his-home-state, Kerrey quote (not forward) with which the introduction starts:

Queer Nation, disgusted that Coke and other major Olympic sponsors (like Panasonic), along with the International Olympic Committee, did nothing to attempt to dissuade Russia from recent antigay legislation, will hold a demonstration against the soft drink company next Wednesday. From the Facebook page:

"Coke: Don't Sponsor Hate! The Coca Cola Company is sponsoring Russian
government hate at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. In June,
Russia enacted its anti-gay propaganda law that bans any pro-LGBT
statement in public or private and on the Internet. The Russian
government has made being out and proud a crime. Coke is a World Partner
and a major sponsor of the Games. Join Queer Nation NY and RUSA LGBT.
Hashtag: #DumpCoke"

Business Insider says leaked internal documents from the German Federal Office for Information Security warn key entities not to use Windows 8 PCs with TPM 2.0 chips because of possible NSA links. The article says Apple phased out the surveillance chips in 2009 and Linux designers deliberately chose not to comply with the TPM scheme and therefore cannot use the spy technology.

While TPM allowed users to opt in and out, TPM 2.0 is activated by
default when the computer boots up. The user cannot turn it off.
Microsoft decides what software can run on the computer, and the user
cannot influence it in any way. Windows governs TPM 2.0. And what
Microsoft does remotely is not visible to the user. In short, users of
Windows 8 with TPM 2.0 surrender control over their machines the moment
they turn it on for the first time.
It would be easy for Microsoft or chip manufacturers to pass the
backdoor keys to the NSA and allow it to control those computers. NO, Microsoft would never
do that, we protest. Alas, Microsoft, as we have learned from the
constant flow of revelations, informs the US government of security
holes in its products well before it issues fixes so that government
agencies can take advantage of the holes and get what they’re looking
for. Experts at the BSI, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and the Federal
Administration warned unequivocally against using computers with
Windows 8 and TPM 2.0. One of the documents from early 2012 lamented,
“Due to the loss of full sovereignty over the information technology,
the security objectives of ‘confidentiality’ and ‘integrity’ can no
longer be guaranteed.” Elsewhere, the document warns, “This can have significant
consequences on the IT security of the Federal Administration.” And it
concludes, “The use of ‘Trusted Computing’ technology in this form ...
is unacceptable for the Federal Administration and for operators of
critical infrastructure.”

Rüdiger Weis, a professor at the Beuth University of Technology in
Berlin, and a cryptographic expert who has dealt with Trusted Computing
for years, told Die Zeitin an interview
that Microsoft wanted to completely change computing by integrating “a
special surveillance chip” in every electronic device. Through that chip
and the processes of Windows 8, particularly Secure Boot, “users
largely lose control over their own hardware and software.” But wouldn’t it contribute to higher levels of security? Certain
aspects actually raise the risks, he said. For example, during
production, the secret key to that backdoor is generated outside the
chip and then transferred to the chip. During this process, copies of
all keys can be made. “It’s possible that there are even legal
requirements to that effect that cannot be reported.” And so the TPM is
“a dream chip of the NSA.” Perhaps even more ominously, he added: “The other realistic scenario
is that TPM chip manufactures don’t sit within reach of the NSA, but in
China....”

The London-based newspaper has been under intense British government pressure this summer, its editor, Alan Rusbridger, revealed earlier this week.He quoted a top government official as telling him last month: “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.” Officials then demanded that the paper physically destroy files of which it in fact had other copies in other countries — a surreal demand Rusbridger described as “one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history.”The decision to publish the revelations concerning the British intelligence service jointly with the Times may give the Guardian leverage in its battle with the British government, which is trying to prevent the stories’ publication. It may also relate to the stronger protections for free speech and press freedom under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; Britain has no such protections, and its Official Secrets Act is aimed at keeping government secrets secret.Sources at both papers declined to discuss the motives beyond the spokeswoman’s reference to the “climate” of pressure.The Guardian’s Rusbridger has used the Times’s megaphone before, to spectacular effect: When the British paper’s coverage of the phone hacking scandal at News Corp. appeared to hit a dead end, a collaboration with the the Times revived it, and helped lead to criminal charges against top News Corp. executives.

Some years ago, an Omaha visitor called the Chamber of Commerce to try to find out if there were any gay clubs in town. The organization was unable to identify any, even though the downtown Chamber offices are within three blocks of two gay bars, including one of the biggest gay discotheques in the Midwest. In fact the land on which the downtown Chamber of Commerce was built used to be the site of one of Omaha's more popular (for a while) gay clubs, The Hollywood.
The Chamber lobbied against Omaha's recently-enacted LGBT antibias ordinance, until the organization's younger professionals revolted against Chamber president David Brown's interference.
During councilman Ben Gray's second, successful attempt to pass the law, Chamber officials reluctantly changed their posititon — to neutrality but not support.

The official U.S. Tourism ad aired in other countries to promote visits to the U.S.A. is also gay-inclusive (at the 1:14 mark below, but don't blink or you'll miss it.) However, even that brief acknowledgement was too much for the serial liars at the Family Research Council, who said this about the ad (starring Roseanne Cash!):

When Congress passed the Travel Promotion Act, people thought it'd be
a great chance to highlight American attractions. What they didn't
know
is that it would highlight same-sex attractions. That's right. The commercial invites people to America-not to see the Grand Canyon, but to
celebrate homosexuality.

Tony Perkins, left, of the Family Research Council and Dave
Bydalek, of Nebraska's Family First, which describes itself as
"associated" with the FRC, an SPLA-designated hate group

Cultural warrior conman Tony Perkins tried to sell the idea that a 1-2 second nod toward the existence of millions of gay people in the USA is an invitation to "celebrate homosexuality" and that it "highlights" same sex attractions?
Uh, the ad is right here. Watch it and judge for yourself the extent of Tony Perkins' dishonesty.
Perkins and his Family Research Council right wing pressure organization are the national associates of Nebraska's Family First, headed by Dave Bydalek, who, earlier this year, tried to run a little antigay con of his own — attempting to trick the Nebraska Judiciary Committee with testimony quoting the widely-discredited Regnerus Study.
Even though Committee Chairman Brad Ashford was obviously unfamiliar with the study, his innate common sense smelled a rat and he didn't buy it. Hit the link in the previous paragraph to see his reaction to Bydalek's snake oil salesmanship.

Chelsea Manning (nee Bradley Manning) was just sentenced to 35 years in prison for, among other things, passing to Wikileaks documents revealing outrageous secret U.S. government behavior, including the shocking extent of collusion between the Clinton State Department and TransCanada during its attempts to construct a tar sands oil pipeline across the environmentally vulnerable Ogallala Aquifer in the Sandhills region of western Nebraska, resulting in eminent domain condemnation of the land of farmers and ranchers even in the absence of a pipeline permit, which still has not been granted to TransCanada.

The
emails released today are a smoking gun that show how oil industry
lobbying money has corrupted the State Department’s review of Keystone
XL. They come out just after it was revealed that the State Department
relied on a major TransCanada contractor to conduct its environmental
review and public hearings on Keystone XL, and Wikileaks cables showed
that other officials at the department gave the company tips on how to
get the pipeline approved.

Recent reports indicate that Yahoo! websites actually beat Google's sites in traffic recently, for the first time in years. (Maybe Google Russia could contribute more to the parent company's hits if it weren't allegedly blocking gay news sites from its search engine results.)
In the wake of the Yahoo! news, TMZ did a segment on whether Vogue's feature on CEO Marissa Meyer "objectified" her.Apparently the fashion arbiter didn't sufficiently do so, according to one TMZ staffer, who wanted pictures of Meyer in a bikini. But he didn't stop there:

(@42:25) You know what? I want Warren Buffett in a little outfit too. I want Warren Buffett abs... on the beach... chillin'.

TMZ must be unaware that "Oracle of Omaha" tycoon Buffett isn't at all copasetic with being objectified by dudes.
The entertainment-news-program-with-an-attitude last ridiculed Buffett by asking him if he was a
"rainmaker," which, evidently, is a gentleman's club patron who showers
lap dancers with money.
It also opined that his wife, Astrid Menks, looks like a "drag queen."
Steve Horn of DeSmogBlog has been Buffett-baiting recently too: Witness his recent post ripping the Berkshire-Hathaway founder and CEO for his "dirty deeds done dirt cheap" stock play in tar sands oil profiteer Suncor.
Horn reminded his readers that Buffett was fingered by Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson as one of 17 "Climate Killers"

Russian LGBT journalist Masha Gessen told All In host Chris Hayes the following on MSNBC last night:

“As long as the pressure is on, it’s not going to make them reconsider
those [existing] laws. But it will possibly make them dial back the
campaign of hate, and it can prevent the passage of further laws,
including the law on removing children from same-sex families.”

Below: looks like a Russian Boy George underneath that dead yak piled on his head.Also: Why Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremonyThe Atlanticexamines the curious contradiction of 88% of Russia's population approving of draconian antigay legislation, and of only 16% saying LGBTs should be "accepted by society" but of that same population wildly embracing gender-bending pop stars like openly gay Boris Moiseev, a beloved 60-year-old (!) institution (middle video) and Philip Kirkorov (top and bottom videos (top video loops until you click on it to stop it). Kirkorov isn't openly gay, which only means he hasn't come out and actually said the word.

Stephen Amico, a professor of music and media studies at the University of Amsterdam who is writing a book about homosexuality and Russian pop, said Russians in smaller cities have told him that they like the pizazz of gender-bending acts, which seem to brighten an otherwise dreary provincial existence. Older women in particular seem to love Moiseev for his emphasis on beauty and tenderness -- two aspects that were lacking in Soviet life. Amico's personal theory, though, is that Russians simply need an outlet to escape the binary heterosexuality that's been imposed on them. The law says you can't promote gay rights, but you sure as heck can rock out to a indefatigable drag queen.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

On August 2nd, Louisiana sued Texas Brine, the company that mined the
salt cavern that experts have identified as the trigger for the
sinkhole. Every few weeks the sinkhole burps—this is really the term the
geologists use—and somewhere between 20 and 100 barrels of sweet crude
bubble up to the surface.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Josh Vorhees reports in Slate (excerpt below) that journalist James Kirchick, went rogue during taping of a program on Russia Today, and instead of talking about the sentencing of Bradley Manning, he hijacked the segment to take RT to task for ignoring the plight of LGBTs in Russia. Zack Ford at ThinkProgress has a list of ways RT contributors have spun Russia's war on LGBTs.

Manning, sentenced to 35 years today by an Army Judge, Col. Denise Lind, will be eligible for parole in about 9 years when he is 33, with credit for time served and more credit for harsh treatment.
Several years ago, the Pentagon ignored Freedom of Information Act requests to release the video of U.S. soldiers laughing as journalists and children were shot from an Apache helicopter, so Wikileaks and Bradley Manning released the video above.
Other Wikileaks documents revealing outrageous secret U.S. government behavior are summarized here, not including the shocking extent of collusion between the Clinton State Department and TransCanada
during its attempts to construct a tar sands oil pipeline across the
environmentally vulnerable Ogallala Aquifer in the sandhills of western
Nebraska, resulting in eminent domain condemnation of the land of farmers and ranchers even in the absence of a pipeline permit, which still has not been granted to TransCanada.

The
emails released today are a smoking gun that show how oil industry
lobbying money has corrupted the State Department’s review of Keystone
XL. They come out just after it was revealed that the State Department
relied on a major TransCanada contractor to conduct its environmental
review and public hearings on Keystone XL, and Wikileaks cables showed
that other officials at the department gave the company tips on how to
get the pipeline approved.

“When a soldier who shared information with the press and public is
punished far more harshly than others who tortured prisoners and killed
civilians, something is seriously wrong with our justice system. A legal system that doesn’t distinguish
between leaks to the press in the public interest and treason against
the nation will not only produce unjust results, but will deprive the
public of critical information that is necessary for democratic
accountability.”

The depth of anger was shown by a bizarre nationalist eulogy penned
Monday by Sovietsky Sport editor Yury Tsybanev about the exploits of the
4x400-metres female quartet who beat the United States for the gold. "They
were standing on top of the pedestal, our four little blondes, four
Russian birch trees, and it was as if the blood of our ancestors boiled
in my veins," he said, boasting that our "fair-skinned girls massively
beat the black-skinned ones". He said the Russian quartet had
"genes picked up from Russia's centuries of historic struggle and
upheaval". He added: "Consider this my answer to those 'rights
activists' who started pestering and insulting Lena Isinbayeva." Interestingly,
the respected head of Russia's Athletics Federation Valentin
Balakhnichev was among the few Russian officials to criticise Isinbayeva
on the issue.

Below: the US 4x400 Women's relay team (Natasha Hastings Jessica Beard Ashley Spencer and Francena McCorory) won the silver medal at the 2013 IAAF World Championships at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow on August 17, 2013. The U.S. won 25 medals, Russia 17.

...Defenders of the NSA, like defenders of the NYPD, plead that their
errors are largely inadvertent or well-intentioned. That’s a fair and
important point. But their claims of adequate oversight are
self-refuting. When you respond to evidence of infractions by telling us
that everything you’re doing is OK and that you already have internal
control mechanisms, that doesn’t show us the extent to which those
mechanisms are working. It shows the extent to which they’re failing. It
tells us you need better independent oversight. Spare us the Cheney scare tactics. Appointing a civil liberties
advocate to argue before the FISC won’t cripple national security. Nor
will full reporting of compliance incidents to the FISC and the
intelligence committees. Body cameras on cops won’t ruin policing,
either. They’ve helped other police departments, vindicating accused officers and reducing misconduct complaints.
When agents of the government are closely watched, compliance is
verified, noncompliance is reduced, and citizens become more confident
that our rights are being respected. Everybody wins...

Monday, August 19, 2013

AKSARBENT thinks CBS's coverage of NSA disclosures has been contemptibly and obviously biased (especially its incessant reliance on Washington spook mouthpiece and FBI apologist John Miller). Here's what The Nation thought of Miller's coverage of the various FBI accounts of why it killed Boston Bomber acquaintance Ibragim Todashev in an interrogation room:

Read the details of that version and you almost have to laugh. One of the cops texted the FBI agent to tell him the suspect was getting agitated? And it was when the FBI guy was reading the text that all the action started? And the “samurai sword” that became a “pole” that became a “broomstick” had now become the metal part of a broom, perhaps to make it sound more like the original “knife.” John Miller of CBS, the longtime reporter who later became an FBI hack, recounts the latest here, as usual bending over backwards to accept the official story. You’ll see that like many others he makes no mention of how the agency could claim this was a knife attack for a week before the broomstick appeared. That’s some kind of tough reporting.

Today, friend-of-the-NSA Bob Schieffer, who made a fool of himself a week ago on the issue of domestic spying, asked puffball questions of John Miller on the CBS Evening News, which they used as a platform to try to con viewers into seeing Glenn Greenwald as some sort of petulant fag intent on exacting revenge on Britain's spy agency, GCHQ, for inconveniencing his Brazilian boyfriend at the airport.

Some journalists were outraged by what happened at Heathrow.
Here's what Rachel Maddow said yesterday:

Here's what the Brazilian government and Amnesty International had to say:

The government of Brazil issued a statement in which it expressed its
"grave concern" over the detention of one of its citizens and the use
of anti-terror legislation. It said: "This measure is without
justification since it involves an individual against whom there are no
charges that can legitimate the use of that legislation. The Brazilian
government expects that incidents such as the one that happened to the
Brazilian citizen today are not repeated." Widney Brown, Amnesty
International's senior director of international law and policy, said:
"It is utterly improbable that David Michael Miranda, a Brazilian
national transiting through London, was detained at random, given the
role his partner has played in revealing the truth about the unlawful
nature of NSA surveillance. "David's
detention was unlawful and inexcusable. He was detained under a law
that violates any principle of fairness and his detention shows how the
law can be abused for petty, vindictive reasons."There is simply
no basis for believing that David Michael Miranda presents any threat
whatsoever to the UK government. The only possible intent behind this
detention was to harass him and his partner, Guardian journalist Glenn
Greenwald, for his role in analysing the data released by Edward Snowden."

Maynard (Bob "Gilligan's Island" Denver) slyly flashes a nipple to the CBS eye while trying to talk his best buddy Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hick­man) into taking off all his clothes. Whoever said 1950s television was a vast waste­land obviously didn't know where to look.